More Controllers: The Wiimote

   The Nintendo Wii is probably the most uniquely innovative console in this generation. Really though, the focus is not so much the console itself. The innovation stems from the way in which the console is controlled: the Wiimote. The Wiimote has proven to be the mainstream introduction of motion control to the video gaming world. The Nintendo Wii been so successful with motion control that we have seen the other major console manufacturers flat-out abandon other planned console features and run straight for the motion control jackpot. Continuing my controller series, a synopsis of how I feel about the Wiimote.

   The thought that has always stuck with me pertaining to the Wiimote is that it is not conducive to playing video games in the way that we play them. The Wii really does not feel like it belongs in this generation of video game console at all. This serves as a testament to the power of motion control in gaming. In this instance, being the first to make it work was the major contributing factor to the success of the product.
   The fundamental problem I have with the Wiimote is that the motion control falls apart when the gaming gets fast. It feels sluggish in response. No matter how much I play, I cannot get over the fact that I am actually waving the Wiimote at a sensor bar either below or above my television, not at the television itself. I really do not think it tracks that well either, no matter the sensitivity setting on the controller. In many ways, this is why I would think the six-axis control on the PS3 Dual Shock 3 would win over the Wiimote any day. Yet, developers do not go out of their way to support the six-axis, because it feels awkward when gaming gets fast. You have to hold the controller in a certain way and move just right in order to do what you want. In a lot of ways, it turns video games into a process of mimicking a bunch of hand signals. This goes the same for Microsoft's solution. I do not buy into, "Your body is the controller." That directly translates into, "Charades for your television." Bottom line, a gaming controller will have a place in gaming for at least the next couple generations of consoles. We have at least a few technological feats in processing to go before natural feeling motion control is fully viable.
   The Wiimote falls apart further though when you begin using it as a traditional controller. Whether you want to or not, many games require you to spend some time using the Wiimote as a traditional controller. There are several configurations for this. Some games have you hold the Wiimote sideways. Another method has you connect what is known as the nunchuck and control with the nunchuk in the left hand and the Wiimote in the right. Other methods include various other "classic" controllers Nintendo has released for use with certain games. The better games will allow you to choose the control method; however, most will make you use either the sideway method or the nunchuck method.
   Holding the Wiimote sideways looks and feels much like holding a Nintendo controller. In terms of gameplay, the shortage of buttons highlights the feel. While it is by far my favorite non-motion control method, it feels every bit as old-fashioned as it should. Many games done in 3D almost have an auto-movement feel. Essentially, the game plays like a 2D Game, with the character moving from left-to-right in a tightly confined space. Nintendo could have planned for the thought that a developer would want to use the controller in such a way and at least included an analog stick.

   The nunchuck setup is my least favorite, but it is the best configuration for 3D games with wide-open areas. The nunchuck is an analog stick with shoulder buttons; therefore, it does feel natural in your left hand. The fact that is only connected to the Wiimote with a cord is a bit awkward at first though. After a while, you do get used to it; however, it still feels strangely old. Like the motion control configuration, I do not believe it holds up to the faster moving games.

   There are many add-ons for the Wiimotes. Mostly, these come in the form of plastic molds that you can stick the Wiimote in while playing. This includes various guns, sports peripherals, and driving peripherals. Just about all of these are widely unnecessary. There is on add-on the deserves special mention though. The Plus extension is a worthless addition forced upon the consumer for Nintendo to make more money on what would otherwise be a relatively cheap controller. It was bad enough when the Plus extension was thrown in as an add-on. Now, it is built into the Wiimote. This makes the sideways configuration less comfortable, because you must stretch your thumb further to use those buttons. I am not okay with this. There are only a small handful of games that use the Plus extension and most of those are not fun. Spare me the worthless attachments please.

   There is no denying that Nintendo has paved the way for motion technology to have a place in gaming. However, in doing so, I believe they have really shown the true limitations of such technology as well. While other companies are currently emulating the motion control experience, the fact that most games still require you to use a controller in a traditional controller way proves that the video game controller as we know it is here to stay.

Postmortem Review: Ben 10: Alien Force - How I Would Have Written It

Introduction
   Ben 10: Alien Force is a Nintendo Wii game that is loosely based on the cartoon series by the same name. Developed by Monkey Bar Games, published by D3 Publisher, released on October 28, 2008, and thrown in the bargain bin shortly thereafter, Ben 10 was a quick cash-in on a semi-popular cartoon franchise. Following is a postmortem review that describes how I would have felt about the finished product of the game had I been on the development team. I start with the trailer.



The Good
Well Targeted
   We had one goal above all others with Ben 10: Alien Force; quickly make a game based on the license to cash in on the opportunity while the license was still popular. This went very well. The obviously intended target was young children, so we knew that we did not need to add much by way of diversions or complexity. We had a simple battle system which used only basic combos that was implemented across all characters. This kept the combos from becoming confusing to the younger audience. The game was short, but did follow a storyline. All in all, this game was perfect for the time frame we had to make it and the audience it was intended for.


Tight Controls
   There was not much to the battle system or other controls in the game, but what was there worked perfectly. There was some initial complaining about mapping the jump action to the "Z" button in the left hand of the player; however, after playing for a short while, the jump became natural. Fighting was simple, yet responsive. The moves were easy enough to execute. Choosing to keep the moves the same from alien form to alien form was a good choice for our audience.


Bug Free is the Way to Be
   All the hours I spent playing Ben 10: Alien Force during and after production made me proud at how cleanly the code executed. These days, big name games regularly release filled with bugs. It is shameful that this is an accepted practice in the industry. Everybody on this team should look back and be proud that they released a bug free product.


The Bad
Too Linear
   Nobody has to worry about getting lost in Ben 10. The whole game; in classic brawler fashion, is basically move from the left side of the stage to the right side of the stage. While this works well for kids, I have a hard time denying that even my own kids would be bored by this game.


Who Wrote This?
   The voice-overs were awful. The story was worse. While we wanted this to be its own story within the Ben 10 universe, we did very little to step outside what the audience already knows about Ben 10. To top off the ho-hum story, the ending was left wide open for a sequel. If we really wanted to do an independent story, we should have written a full story. We would have been much better off following the events of a couple or few episodes. The voice-overs that happened every time an alien change occurred was also a bad idea. The aliens say the same thing over and over again. Every time I hear, "Freeze...I always wanted to say that," I cringe just a little.


Very Short
   Part of not having a good story was also not having a long enough story. Total play time in Ben 10 was maybe a few hours. We could have easily extended it by making more puzzles which challenged the player to use different aliens to make it through the environment. We kept this to a minimal though, which I think was an awful mistake. We also could have had some sort of collectible system, but this was not added in due to budget and time.


The Ugly
Two Player or Not Two Player?
   Probably the worst thing we did in the project was add in two player play in which the second player plays the exact same character as player one. We did not even change the colors of the clothes or aliens on player two. This led to some confusing battles. Over and over in play-testing, we saw players randomly jump or turn a circle. When we asked why they would do this, they told us that they were trying to figure out which one they were. This would have been easily fixed. There was no excuse for it being left the way it was.


Can We Add Some Color?
   Ben 10: Alien Force had no shine to it whatsoever. There was nothing that looked good about it. Most of the alien forms were so darkly colored that you could not make out the detail. The very bland and dark colors did not help the gameplay in any way. Even the cartoons had more vibrant colors than this game. For a hand-held device, the color scheme would have been appropriate. However, this was the Wii. The colors and amount of detail we used made this game a disgrace to any high-definition television.


Uninspired
   This game was completely uninspired. We could have dropped in any character models, kept the basic brawler mechanics, and called it anything. It would have been the same game and probably sold just as well. The levels were not thoughtful. The gameplay never went beyond a Nintendo-age brawler. There was nothing extra. Playing as the different alien forms was not fun or rewarding. It is clear from the first time the player turns the game on that this is nothing but a generic knock-off of Double Dragon or Battletoads, only using a better known to today's kids license. We could have taken any handful of mechanics and made the game infinitely better. Unfortunately, the bottom line was the publisher wanted the game out on short order. We did what we were paid for, but even we find the game incredibly boring.

Review: Donkey Kong Country Returns - I Love the Way it Hurts

Title:        Donkey Kong Country Returns
Platform:     Nintendo Wii
Release Date: November 21, 2010
Developer:    Retro Studios, Inc.
Publisher:    Nintendo
My Rating:    8~8.5ish I loved it, but there
                       was nothing new.

   I always said that the time for me to buy a Nintendo Wii would be when the release of a new Donkey Kong Country was imminent. A couple of years after the Golden Age of the Wii, I got my wish. I purchased my Wii in October, mostly in anticipation of Donkey Kong Country. A little more than a month later, Donkey Kong Country Returns came out.
   Needless to say, I had very high expectations. I had replayed the Super Nintendo DKC trilogy over the summer to review the state of the franchise at the last 2D entry. I understood DKC Returns would be a retro-throwback. However, as with all classic video game revivals, I was anxious to see what was new and exciting. I will revisit this thought towards the end of the review.
   Fans of the DKC series will instantly know the story. A mysterious tiki god stole a hoard of bananas. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong go through the island on a quest to recover the stolen goods. Something I really appreciated about this game was the complete lack of dialogue. There were no voice overs and very little text to read. All of the story was relayed via short cut-scenes, which left me free to do what I wanted; play some DKC.
Here is an E3 trailer for DKC Returns from YouTube:
   The gameplay is pure Donkey Kong Country platforming. All of the original barrel blasting, baddie stomping, banana collecting is back. The levels are as frustratingly difficult as anybody can remember. Many of the later levels will make you throw your controller at the television, so be sure to wear your wrist-strap. The rail-levels returned. There are also levels in which you navigate a barrel propelled like a rocket. There are eight areas in all; nine if you count the endgame temples. Everybody should remember the collecting of the KONG letters, which is present here. Also, each level has puzzle pieces that can be collected. There are bonus rooms sprinkled throughout each level in which the player must collect all of the items within thirty seconds to obtain a puzzle piece. Rambi the Rhino is back; unfortunately, only in a couple of levels with very limited use. Also, there are no Rambi-specific bonus levels. I was very saddened by that. The only other animal character is Squawks, but he only works as a purchasable item that helps locate puzzle pieces. Some of the boss fights are incredibly hard, while others will be easily beaten without wasting a single life. They were all fun though.
   I have mixed feelings about the graphics in Donkey Kong Country Returns. The bottom line is that the Wii generally fails when it comes to impressing graphically. I believe Donkey Kong Country has always been the shiniest game on any Nintendo platform it has graced; even the N64. However, this is a far cry from where graphics in games are today. Also, the way it runs that disc in the console is shameful. To have moving backgrounds behind living scenes is really a standard. Nintendo does not even do it in high-definition. That said though, this definitely looks like a throwback to Donkey Kong Country, but the whole scene is just underwhelming in comparison to the Super Nintendo predecessors. Another graphical problem I saw was collision detection with a few of the baddies and obstacles. There were many times when I felt the collision was off by a centimeter or more. Even my wife said something about it at one point, which really highlights the point.
   The audio was anything I would have wanted from Donkey Kong Country. Already mentioned was the complete lack of voice-overs. My experience so far with Wii and video game narratives is either they have none or too much. After a long day, gameplay always wins over video game narrative for me. Spare me the talking and let us play! The music never strays from the classic, straight down to banana collecting and the boinks and bongs. I would like to hear some new mixes in the future; however, it was a good choice not to stray too far from the original soundtrack.
   Donkey Kong Country Returns offers two control schemes; with nunchuck and without. I chose the without scheme, but my kids really liked the nunchuck layout. Holding the Wiimote like a classic controller works best for me. Yet, I cannot help but feel like I am playing a Nintendo game when using the Wiimote as a classic controller. It is small, only has a couple of buttons, and you get blisters on your thumb from needing to jam down the directional buttons. The whole thing is just archaic and I wish we could move on to a real game controller. The implementation was perfect though. My jumps always landed fairly. I never felt as if I did not have good control of Donkey Kong.
   All in all, I love Donkey Kong Country. This franchise will always be known for some of the funnest, purest, challenging platforming available. This entry was true to the originals. We definitely need more DKC soon. However, I really want Nintendo to know that is time for something new. I really missed the ridable spider, ostrich, and swordfish. Water levels in general were absent from this edition. When things like this happen, it feels like players are getting less for their money. Please do not be afraid to go outside the box when bringing back a franchise. You might not go so far as to go from 2D to 3D, but you can still do something new. Love Donkey Kong Country Returns for what it is, but do not be afraid to ask for better next time.

Super Paper Mario Review: Super Not Very Fun

Title:        Super Paper Mario
Platform:     Nintendo Wii
Release Date: April 9, 2007 (US)
Developer:    Intelligent Systems
Publisher:    Nintendo
My Rating:    Somewhere between a 2 and a 3. 
              Really, don't play this game.

   I was very excited for Super Paper Mario when I first purchased it. I had just got my Wii. While I had my eyes on other games, Super Paper Mario was the vote that made the cut with the family. I love Mario though and have never played the original Paper Mario, so I was very excite to play it...
   ...that is, until I turned it on. Super Paper Mario's biggest problem was apparent from the very first screen. There was too much talk; not enough action. As a RPG/Platformer crossover, you do expect a fair amount of story. However, when a game consists of more reading than playing, there is a serious balance issue. This shows even more when the player actually stops and read the story. A great story can be very fun to read; however, the story in Super Paper Mario was, well, paper-thin. It was clearly geared towards a younger audience, but I have a hard time believing that the kids would have much more interest than I did.
   It is possible for me to see past the story, even if my button mashing finger does get tired of mashing the button. Unfortunately, I had a hard time finding much of worth in the actual game. Want to play through all of Super Mario Paper? Follow this pattern: explore the new area in 2D, be sure to talk to everybody, flip, explore the area in "3D", be sure to talk to everybody, defeat large monster, click through pages and pages of text, repeat.
   If that is not enough to keep you away, let us discuss some of the "mechanics" in Super Paper Mario. First, the 2D to "3D" flip. Notice I put "3D" in quotation marks. This is because of the sprites in Super Paper Mario are just that, sprites. All of the character sprites, good guys or bad, are done in 2D. There is little 3D modeling. Much of the 3D is actually rather flat. Sure, you can move in 4 directions instead of 2, but the extra dimension of movement is very narrow. Moving on, you would think there was not much to be able to be lost in Super Mario Paper; however, you will spend an incredible amount of time circling the levels trying to figure out what to do. Sometimes, you are supposed to walk through a solid wall, with absolutely no clue that this is what you are supposed to do. At another time, my personal favorite to hate, you advance in a level by hitting 3 coin boxes in a specific order. Later in the same level, you come to another set of 3 coin boxes that you also must hit in a specific order. Unfortunately, the order is a combination of 20-something different hits. You only find the combination by venturing back to the beginning of the level and talking to a specific guy. Sure, he informs you that you must write it down, but really?
   All in all, I would say the graphics are not what you would expect; even from a Wii game. The gameplay is simply not fun. The story is worse than the gameplay. I am not sure who would want to play this game. Little kids will be turned off by nonstop reading, as will adults. Those who get past the reading probably will not make it past the constant searching for nothing. By the way, I did not give fair mention to all of the extra content. Why did they even bother? I could not imagine anybody that felt obligated to beat the game would want to waste more time with it.